Loretta Lynn: Wouldn't It Be Great (CD)

Wouldn't It Be Great, the new album from Loretta Lynn, highlights The Queen of Country Music's original songwriting, as sharp as ever since her early days as a musical trailblazer in the 1960s. This third volume of recordings produced by Patsy Lynn Russell and John Carter Cash and recorded at the Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee features tracks all written or co-written by Loretta. - The follow-up to the Grammy-nominated Full Circle, mixes new compositions ("Ruby's Stool," "Ain't No Time To Go," "I'm Dying For Someone To Live For") with newly imagined renditions of timeless classics like the unforgettable "Coal Miner's Daughter" and "Don't Come Home A' Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind)," Loretta's first of 16 career country No. 1 singles.

Loretta Lynn

I'm A Honky Tonk Girl

If untrue, Loretta Lynn's story would strain credibility. Born in a one-room cabin in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, she was married at thirteen and was living in upstate Washington when she began singing. Some Canadians financed a recording session, and her first record was a hit. It led to a contract with Decca and to the Grand Ole Opry. Resettled in Nashville, Loretta befriended Patsy Cline and went on to score more than seventy-five hits. Her story became a best-selling book, and the book became a top-grossing movie. And her career had a triumphant second act when she was coaxed from semi-retirement by Jack White of the post-punk group the White Stripes to collaborate on a top-selling, Grammy-winning record.

Loretta's recording career begins here. She was living in Custer, Washington, and singing in upstate Washington and across the border in British Columbia, Canada. In Vancouver, BC, songwriter Don Grashey and Chuck Williams ran a label, Zero Records, bankrolled by a lumberman, Norm Burley, and a future mayor of Vancouver, Art Phillips. The label started around February 1960 with three records including one by former Fabor artist, Ginny Wright, singing Grashey's only hit as a songwriter, Are You Mine. According to Williams and Grashey, they spotted Loretta singing at the Chicken Coop in Blaine, Washington, and offered her a contract, dated February 1, 1960. One week later, Grashey took her to Los Angeles for a session. According to steel guitarist Speedy West, he was summoned to a small studio on Cahuenga Boulevard to work with Loretta and some pick-up session guys. Taking Loretta and Grashey to one side, he told them she deserved a better studio and better sidemen, and arranged for a session at Western Recorders with the cream of his buddies from the lately deceased Hometown Jamboree.

On I'm A Honky Tonk Girl, Loretta overdubbed a harmony vocal on the chorus, and Speedy was so busy the record was almost a steel guitar solo with guest vocal. According to Loretta, it was about a woman she saw drinking beer and crying most nights at a nightspot near her, Bill's Tavern. Zero pressed up 3500 copies and mailed most of them to dee-jays and reviewers. Charlie Lamb at 'Music Reporter' was moved to poeticism: "New artist with extra special commercial sound," he wrote on March 21. "Has that vibrant voice that's blended with the expansive sunshine, the rustling trees, and the meadow smells." I'm A Honky Tonk Girl was a hit because it was so refreshingly un-Nashville, and because Loretta and her husband got in their car and drove clear across the country stopping everywhere they saw a radio tower. They rolled into Nashville sometime in October 1960, and landed a guest spot on the Opry. After Decca's Owen Bradley offered a contract, the Zero Records partners graciously let her out of her contract, although it took some persuading for Bradley to take her. For one thing, Bradley knew that I'm A Honky Tonk Girl was a throwback and wasn't going to cross over, and for another he already had Kitty Wells in that style. But by luck or judgment, Bradley backed a winner.